


Closet Case

by thedevilchicken



Category: Blitz (2011)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Breathplay, Case Fic, Explicit Language, Homophobic Language, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Rimming, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:02:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6694261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nash and Brant have another serial killer on their hands. It goes about as well as can be expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closet Case

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



The day they caught the gay-hating killer, Nash took one look at the scum as an army of uniformed PCs frogmarched him into the interview room and said, "Well, he doesn't hate gays."

"Oh yeah?" Brant said, crossing his arms over his chest and cocking his head like that was some kind of half-amused, half-arsed challenge. "You know something I don't?" 

Nash gave him a sideways look that practically telegraphed _do you really want me to answer that?_ and Brant huffed and leaned against the wall. Brant doesn't often know when he's outgunned, or at the very least he doesn't tend to openly acknowledge it, but apparently this time he caught on. Reluctantly.

"I know the type," Nash said, as they stood there side by side at the door. "He's the sort you take home after a night out and halfway through he says there's a been a misunderstanding, he was expecting a tin of Carling and Match of the Day."

"What's wrong with Match of the Day?" Brant said. "I _like_ Match of the Day."

Nash raised his brows. He put his hand on the door handle, turned it, paused. They had an interview to conduct.

"My point exactly," he said. Brant scowled. And then they went inside. 

\---

The whole station knows what they did to catch the killer because it's not exactly like they tried to keep it hush-hush. It wouldn't've worked that way, thinking back. Practically the whole bloody station was involved, after all.

It's still half a surprise even now that Brant agreed to it as readily as he did. Nash put it to him in the chief inspector's office so if he threw some kind of large-scale wobbly there'd be witnesses, not that he fancied getting him into trouble but he didn't fancy getting himself knocked in the teeth either, and who the hell knew where Brant was concerned? But Brant just stood there and nodded his head like a good little bobby, and when the gaffer asked what he thought, he smirked and said, "I like to think I'm secure in my sexuality, sir." 

Nash had to try quite hard not to smile and when Brant shot him a sideways glance, Nash thought he looked disgustingly pleased with himself. Of course, Brant mostly fluctuates between smug and surly so that wasn't a massive shock even then. The chief inspector didn't seem to notice at all, however, which was more or less for the best; he just rubber-stamped the op and they wandered out, the whole thing oddly anticlimactic. Nash almost felt disappointed there hadn't been more fireworks.

"So, so far our suspects are anyone and everyone guilty of homosexuality in the Greater London area," Nash said, as they sat back down at their desks out in the office.

"Well, except you," Brant said helpfully, though the way he sat back in his chair with his arms crossed, hands tucked up under his armpits, said he was still feeling bizarrely pleased with himself. "I mean, you've got an alibi." 

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Nash said, but he supposed even if Brant was being a tosser, he was factually correct. He'd been working late at the station the night of the first one and was first on the scene because of it, and they'd both been out getting pissed on that genuinely awful Irish gutrot moonshine Brant liked so much on the night of the second. Not that he needed an alibi. At least he liked to think he didn't, even if half the station still looked at him like he might grope them in the loos if they didn't keep a careful eye out. 

Then, that night, they met outside a club one of the two known victims had been known to frequent. Nash was there early, smoking up against a wall and almost shivering with the cold and Brant was late, lunking down the street looking like a fucking football hooligan, which Nash supposed he'd come to expect. 

"You're wearing a cardigan," Nash said. He'd managed to dress semi-casually himself, jeans and a well-kept leather jacket instead of the suit and coat, but Brant just looked the same as he always did. Then again, Nash had to wonder what exactly Brant would have done if the brief had been _dress like you're going to a gay bar_. It didn't bear thinking about, knowing him.

Brant looked down at himself, retrieved his hands from his hip pockets and patted his cardi like it was the first he was hearing of it. 

"Yeah, and?" Brant said, apparently satisfied with his attire.

Nash just shook his head and they went inside. Apparently his fake boyfriend had terrible fashion sense.

\---

That night, or more correctly speaking the next morning, Brant nodded off in Nash's living room like he had for the three nights that had passed since the second murder. 

Nash let him because sod it, it wasn't like it'd never happened before. Of course, then Brant knocked a half-drunk glass of whiskey off the table in his sleep and it spilled all over the floor like he'd inherited an old labrador with a bladder weakness. Brant didn't clean up in the morning, not that Nash had really expected him to. He wasn't the most considerate house guest he'd ever had, maybe because he was an _uninvited_ guest, but somehow that seemed to bother Nash just as little as it bothered Brant. After all, they were partners. Sort of. Most of the time.

He slept there again the night after that and bought a packet of chocolate-covered Hobnobs on the way back from the club because he said he felt peckish, then got crumbs all over the furniture. He slept there again the next night and Nash came downstairs in the morning to find him raiding the fridge barefoot and shirtless in the jeans he'd just slept in and the reason for that became clear when he stole a pair of Nash's socks and a baggy old t-shirt and wore them to work. He slept there again the night after that and the night after that till Nash purposely sat in the chair when they got in from the club and made him sit on the sofa instead, so he wouldn't keep waking up the next day with a crick in his neck that he whinged about like a primary school kid who'd grazed his knee on the playground at break. He got used to seeing him lurking about on a stool in the kitchen in the morning in his boxers and socks and a stolen t-shirt while they drank coffee in silence till they both felt closer to awake. 

It was like being in a relationship with none of the sex, he thought, not that he wanted to have sex with Brant. Smart-alec, sarky Brant with his perpetually scraped knuckles like he just didn't know when to stop kicking the shit out of people. Smug, cocky Brant who was somehow always covered in stubble even though he'd taken up using Nash's razor completely without permission, all lean muscle though all he ever did was eat. And eat, and _eat_. No, he didn't want to have sex with Brant. He definitely didn't have any thoughts about putting his hands on him, about the rasp of Brant's stubble against his palms as he ran them against his jaw, or dense muscle under his fingers as he ran them down his chest, down his abdomen, down to the waist of his jeans. He wasn't thinking about it at all. Christ no, never.

Then, on the sixth night, there was another killing. 

"Did you know any of 'em?" Brant asked, as they waited for the pathologist to finish, standing around in the street sometime past 2am with their hands in their pockets, stamping their feet. Nash was acutely aware that at least a quarter of all police work seemed to involve standing around like a wanker waiting for someone else to do their job so they could do theirs. Brant seemed to fill most of that time with the sound of his own voice, just like he did the other three quarters.

"Yeah," Nash said. "All the poofs know each other. It's a club, like the muslims and the blacks and the ignorant bastards. There's a newsletter and everything."

"Sarcastic cunt."

Nash crossed his arms and stamped his feet again and ignored him. Brant did exactly the same thing, like his burly bald body double in a fucking cardigan. 

Afterwards, they had crap packet sandwiches and pissy coffee for breakfast from a bastard Pret a Manger that had moved in down the street from the station, over photos of the body. It wasn't like they hadn't seen it, the latest victim lying there in his own bed naked and freshly deceased with bruises right around his neck. Apparently the next door neighbour had dialled 999 and sat with a WPC on the doorstep after the cops had arrived, saying something about maybe she'd've called earlier if it hadn't just sounded like he was having the time of his life in there. Brant had helpfully noted he _had_ , if you thought about it, because it wasn't like he'd be doing anything like it again. The neighbour burst into tears. Brant could be an insensitive sod at times.

"How'd we miss this?" Brant said, and huffed out a breath as he sat back in his swivel chair back in the office so vehemently that Nash was half convinced one of these days the backrest was going to break off and he'd fall on his arse. It'd serve him right, but it held for the moment and he put his hands up behind his head, rubbing at his neck. They hadn't slept, and frankly he was looking the worse for wear for caffeine. Nash doubted he looked any better himself.

"We can't be everywhere at once," Nash said, and it sounded reasonable but he knew it didn't help because it turned out the man in question _had_ been at a club that night, just not the one where they'd been; there'd be another location to add into the nightly outing from then on, but that didn't help the poor sod lying dead in the morgue or the two that'd gone there before him. 

Nash rubbed his eyes and got stray mayonnaise in his eyebrow that Brant leaned over and rubbed away with his thumb. Nash frowned at him. Brant frowned back. They looked at each other. And for a second there was a notion there right on the tip of his tongue, tugging right at the back of his brain, unsettling like a report full of seemingly disparate evidence he was on the verge of connecting, but then Brant licked the mayonnaise off his thumb and sat back down. The notion disappeared without a trace.

"That's disgusting," Nash said. 

"Says the fella who puts it up men's arses," Brant replied, cracking a smile.

Nash gave a long-suffering sigh. They got back to work.

\---

The second club was busy that night, Saturday night, something to do with them playing 80s music and that somehow being cool with the kids who hadn't even been alive back in the 80s, unlike the two of them. Nash didn't get it, but at least the heat in the place forced Brant to take off the cardi that made him look like someone's dear old nan and the t-shirt underneath was a size too small, pulling tight across his chest. Not that that seemed to bother anyone in their immediate vicinity. 

"You're wearing my clothes again," Nash said, leaning up by Brant's ear at the table so he'd hear him over the din of bloody _Cher_ pounding in the air, the floors, the tables, the damned walls. There were practically ripples in their drinks from it. 

"And you're moaning about it again, surprise surprise," Brant replied, and sipped from the one bottle of beer that he'd been nursing for over an hour by then, since they were technically on duty and all that. "Looks like you're the only one." And the smug tosser was right, of course, because several pairs of nearby eyes kept flicking repeatedly in his direction. He ran one grazed-knuckled hand over the front of the shirt. "Does it make me look like a shirt-lifter or does your lot just zero in on the heterosexiual tourists?"

Nash shook his head in something a couple of steps from exasperation. "You're in a gay bar, Brant," he said. "Chances are they _don't_ think you're straight."

"They probably think I'm here with you."

"Well, that's sort of the point."

They'd been posing - somewhat poorly, admittedly - as a couple for a week by that point, of course, and it had been part of the plan since the chief inspector's office, so it wasn't as if this was exactly coming as a surprise to Brant. Which was, perhaps, why Brant took that as his cue to shuffle closer on the crappy pleather bench there up against the back wall of the club. He wrapped one arm around Nash's shoulders, which pushed him forward awkwardly till he gave in and slid down the wall a couple of inches into an only semi-comfortable slump. Nash sighed, contemplated shrugging him off or pouring the remains of his beer into his lap, then crossed his legs and put his hand on Brant's knee instead. 

"Any second now you'll be feeling me up good and proper," Brant said, looking highly amused, which wasn't quite the sentiment Nash had been aiming for. "I know I'm hot stuff round here but don't get carried away, sweetheart."

"I'll try to refrain," Nash replied, and accidentally-on-purpose squeezed Brant's thigh. So Brant trailed the back of his fingers down the side of Nash's neck, so Nash raised his brows and slipped his hand about six inches higher up Brant's leg, dangerously close to his groin, and squeezed again. Brant snickered under his breath and rubbed at Nash's collarbone then stuck his fingers into the neck of his shirt, his rough fingertips finding bare skin. So, Nash turned to Brant, looked him straight in the eye, brought one hand up to his face and cupped his stubbly jaw with his palm. 

"You're playing chicken in a gay bar with a gay man," he pointed out, solemnly, and patted Brant's cheek. "You're not going to win, you know."

"You want to bet?"

Nash frowned. "Not really, no." 

"Spoilsport." 

"I prefer to think of it as being responsible." 

"I prefer to think of it as being a cunt."

Brant snorted and picked himself up, extricating himself from the situation, then leaned down and planted a ridiculous smacking smooch on Nash's forehead. "I'm going to go piss," he said, which was more information than Nash actually required, and wandered off across the room to do so, muttering something about guarding his rear. 

They'd been pratting about in clubs for a week by then, chatting with people, having conversations with the bar staff, Brant occasionally delighting in sticking one hand into the back pocket of Nash's jeans or putting an arm round his waist just to see what he'd do like it was bloody hilarious to taunt the gay copper. Then again, Nash had to admit it was better than some of the shit they'd done back at his last nick and it wasn't like Brant actually meant anything by it, he just had a crap sense of humour. And, Nash knew, exactly contrary to what he'd just said, Brant actually _was_ winning his little game because Brant certainly wasn't the one who kept shutting it down night after night: Nash was. He didn't want to find out where it might end up. He didn't want to find out how far it might go, though he suspected the answer would be _too far_. Brant had no notion of limits.

Problem was, under different circumstances, under any other circumstances at all, Brant would've been just his type. As he watched him make his way back to the table in the too-tight shirt, telling himself not to appreciate the view for fuck's sake, he had a suspicion it was probably for the best if he didn't mention that.

\---

The routine was tiring. 

Nights at clubs were followed by brief, blissful periods of sleep followed by work followed by clubs in an endless cycle till it was nine days, ten days, a fortnight, and Brant was still sleeping on his sofa. It was like the time Nash's old friend from college had got divorced and had nowhere else to sleep except Brant wasn't divorced, hadn't even been married, and definitely had somewhere else to sleep: his own fucking flat at the other side of the city. He wouldn't've minded but Brant's jeans had started finding their way into his washing basket by that point like Nash's flat was some kind of full service launderette and his socks were on the bathroom floor wrapped up in wet towels because, unsurprisingly, he was a bloody troglodyte. And he'd never actually asked if he could use his shower in the first place.

"The boss said we should take the night off," Nash said, sometime in the early evening sometime in the third week, sometime in the fifth week since the first murder, on something like the seventh or eighth cup of coffee. Much more and he'd be too wired to sleep even though he was completely and utterly fucking exhausted. 

"You going to?" Brant asked, shuffling papers in a folder like he hadn't already read them three times. 

"Yes, I am."

Brant sat back hard in his chair and the backrest strut creaked precariously. "Fuck that," he said.

Nash leaned forward, his hands on the desk. "You remember that burnout we talked about?"

"We're in the middle of a case."

"We're _always_ in the middle of a case. We're the police."

"That's my point."

Nash sighed. "I'm having a fucking night off, Brant, and I suggest you do the same," he said. "I'm going out and _not_ pretending I'm there with you for once."

"So that's the sort of place you go when you're off the clock?"

"Now and then."

"When you're looking for cock?"

Nash sighed. "I wouldn't put it quite that way." 

"So you're going?"

"Yes."

"What, really?"

" _Yes_." He stuffed the remains of the lacklustre Pret ham sandwich he'd picked up for dinner back into its box and shoved it into the overflowing office bin. "Try not fall asleep in my flat tonight. I'm going to want the place to myself."

Brant scowled. Nash put on his scarf and his gloves and his coat while Brant scowled at him some more, trying to look like he wasn't and failing one hundred percent.

Nash didn't point out that they weren't the only policemen in the world, or the country, the city, not even in their particular station, and sometimes, just _sometimes_ , they couldn't be all things to all people. Which was probably why Brant was so burnt out he was sleeping on Nash's sofa in the first place, like a cross between penance and counselling. Nash made his way to the door and left Brant sitting there looking halfway between pissed off and distraught. It was an interesting look on him, not one he'd seen too many times before, and that was maybe why he was thinking about him when he changed and went out, mingled, flirted. 

It was nearly two in the morning when Nash got home and unlocked his door. It was eight minutes later, while the twenty-something postgrad from some sort of socially conscious discipline was minus his shirt and down on his knees in front of him, cock in mouth, that Brant walked in. Nash was honestly more impressed that he'd managed to pick the lock while clearly soused rather than shoulder-barging the door down than he was annoyed, though it was a close run thing. 

"I didn't mean to interrupt," Brant said, so drunk he was almost a caricature of himself as he leaned against the door frame, and the postgrad pulled back and looked up semi-alarmed at Nash from his knees. Nash tucked himself back in, as uncomfortable as that was, as tempting as it was to wave a congenial hello to Brant and tell the postgrad it was fine, he could just get on with it, never mind the interruption. He'd've liked to've seen what Brant would've made of that, in a perverse kind of way.

"Of course you meant to interrupt," Nash said. 

"Yeah, maybe I did." And he went over to the drinks to get himself a whiskey, the good stuff he'd been drinking Nash out of intermittently ever since they'd met. He sloshed it all over himself, the cabinet and the floor as he poured. 

"Who's that?" the postgrad asked, his hands still on Nash's thighs. 

"My partner," he replied. 

"You said--"

He shrugged in response, so the postgrad with the floppy hair that Nash had had his hands in sixty seconds earlier frowned and stood himself up, put his shirt on and left, and Nash sat there on the sofa where Brant had slept for at least a week or more by then with his erection straining pathetically at his trousers. Brant handed him a drink. The door slammed. His neighbours wouldn't be impressed. 

"You didn't tell the little poofter you meant work," Brant said, then he downed half his whiskey and swayed precariously in the middle of the floor like some kind of bizarre performance art.

"There didn't seem to be much point," Nash replied. "You'd already ruined the mood. Has anyone ever told you you're just as good as a cold shower?"

"So, what, you were going to give him a bit of the old how's your father?"

"I'd thought about it, yes. You might've noticed we were busy."

"See, I don't get it," Brant said, suddenly gesturing so hugely with his glass that Nash almost expected him to launch it straight across the room. "I can understand a mouth 'cause a mouth's a mouth, right? You can close your eyes and pretend it's whoever you like. But taking it up the arse..." He frowned and polished off his drink, spilling it over his chin in the process. It dribbled down his neck and soaked into the collar of his t-shirt. His borrowed t-shirt. Nash was struck with an urge to punch him in the face, or lick the whiskey off his neck, and he wasn't sure which was the most disturbing of the two options. "Do you like to give it or take it?"

"Either," Nash replied, a rather sharp attempt to get Brant to shut the fuck up, but then he actually considered his answer for a second and shrugged faintly against the sofa cushions. "Both, sometimes."

"Perv."

"You asked."

"Well, you didn't have to say."

Brant leaned over to put his glass down on the coffee table and tripped himself along the way, only just recovered in time to not go crashing through it like something out of Laurel and bleeding Hardy. Nash sighed. 

"For God's sake, give up and sleep it off," he said, and he stood and abandoned the sofa so Brant could lie down there instead. Then he mounted the stairs and he left him there mid-sprawl, Brant's shirt half off already. 

He undressed and he brushed his teeth and he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror over the sink, rubbed his eyes, yawned. He palmed his still half-hard cock over his boxers and thought about the floppy-haired postgrad and his mouth and his hands and his bare chest and what might've happened if Brant hadn't been Brant for just one night and left him the fuck alone. He pushed his boxers down to mid-thigh and he tossed himself off leaning on the sink because fuck if Brant was going to take _that_ from him too. Of course, the bastard wouldn't even leave him alone inside his head long enough to knock one out and he came with his jaw clenched, trying not to think about Brant's mouth on him.

Then he went to bed and twenty minutes later, still reading through a case file, he heard footsteps on the stairs. He heard Brant curse. He'd probably stubbed his toe, which served him right.

"Something wrong?" Nash said. 

"Yeah, your sofa's shite," Brant replied, and he got straight into bed with him, stripped down to his boxers and socks. "You tell anyone I did this, I'll have your guts for fucking garters."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Nash said. And he put down the folder and he turned out the light.

There were fifty other things he could've said, of course, sarcastic or biting or both, but he decided he was too tired to even think them. So instead he went to sleep, listening to Brant snore like the very damned. 

He supposed he wouldn't be taking another night off for a while if this was what happened.

\---

He started awake with the alarm in the morning as usual and Brant swore into the pillow right next to him. He peeked out with one eye, groaned and then swore into the pillow again.

"You interfere with me?" Brant said in the end, turning to face him, squinty-eyed against the daylight like a bloody vampire. 

"Yes, we made wild, passionate love until you collapsed unconscious from exhaustion," Nash replied, deadpan, while Brant sniffled like he was getting a cold and stopped just short of using the edge of the pillowcase as a handkerchief. 

"Tissues in the top drawer," Nash pointed out, so Brant shifted over and opened the drawer, and came back with a grimace that was close to a gurn. 

"One day the wind'll change and you'll stay like that," Nash said. "Not that it would make much of a difference."

Brant continued to scowl even as he blew his nose, which Nash had to admit probably took a fair amount of skill. The missed shot at the bin with the used tissue, however, probably didn't. 

"I didn't need to see your bonking paraphernalia," Brant said. 

"I didn't need you taking up half my bed all night," Nash said. "We all make compromises." And he threw back the sheets to head into the bathroom. 

"Hope I was on top," Brant called after him. Nash just shook his head, briefly considered saying something crass and closed the door instead. 

Of course, Brant had no fucking boundaries. He came in to piss while Nash was in the shower as if that was something either of them needed to be subjected to, then apparently decided now they'd shared a bed it was a natural step to use Nash's toothbrush and not just chew gum like he usually did all day, till he got the chance to use the brush he'd got stashed in his locker at the station. He talked as he brushed, getting toothpaste all down his chin in the process. 

"That's disgusting," Nash told him as he exited the shower, interrupting his mostly case-related stream-of-consciousness blather. 

"Now _that's_ disgusting," Brant said, gesturing with the purloined toothbrush at Nash's wet, naked body. "Cover up, for fuck's sake."

"It's my bathroom," Nash pointed out, pointedly not covering up.

"Suit yourself," Brant said, and then peeled off his toothpaste-spattered shirt, peeled off his boxers and gave him an eyeful as he got into the shower. At least the ignorant git wouldn't need to borrow his shampoo, Nash thought, which was something if not a lot, especially since he hadn't needed the image of Brant stark naked in his head. At all. At _all_. Especially when he had to work with him. Especially when he had Brant playing a game of fucking chicken with him on a nightly basis, leaning up against his back at the bar while they ordered drinks. 

They got nowhere at work, interviewed the second victim's sister though she had sod all to say and then talked with the third one's neighbours, his ex-boyfriend, got accused of sending the only gay copper in London so they could pump him for information more effectively. Brant said something under his breath about how he bet he'd like Nash to do the _pumping_ and Nash resisted the urge to cuff him round the back of the head. But the ex had an alibi and they had fuck all. Fuck all except the fact all three victims had frequented those two clubs and had been there, in one or the other of them, on the night they'd died.

There was an unmarked car outside each club and a couple of the fellas from the station took turns walking around the area every half hour or so, just in case. Nash and Brant paid in cash at the door and went inside and bought drinks at the bar, had a quick conversation with the bartender, talked about the murders in as round-about a way as they could while Brant's fingers were casually rubbing the back of Nash's neck, up under the hairline. So Nash brought his fingers up to the small of Brant's back and rubbed there, tucked his hand underneath the - bloody _stolen_ , of course - shirt and rubbed bare skin instead. Brant tensed and glanced at him sharply but apparently he wasn't about to be defeated, so he turned while Nash was speaking, got close, got closer, nudged the side of Nash's neck with his nose, prickled him with his stubble, brushed his idiot lips over Nash's pulse. The bartender laughed and excused himself. 

"What do you think you're doing?" Nash asked, at least part mortified. 

Brant sucked on Nash's earlobe. "Winning," he said. 

On the way in from the club that night, Nash stopped into a Sainsbury's Local and he bought two new toothbrushes. Brant slept in the bed again.

\---

They went over the files _again_ at the kitchen counter in the morning, both sat up on stools drinking coffee. 

"It almost..." Nash finished off his coffee and put the cup in the sink, frowning. Brant looked at him expectantly and he turned the photo around, fished out one of the first victim, then the second. "He did them face to face, right?" 

"Right," Brant said, eyeing him over his own mug of coffee. "Where's this leading?"

"And they were all found in bed, right?"

"Right." 

Nash got up off his stool, took Brant's coffee out of his hand and set it down on the counter. Brant looked unimpressed. 

"Upstairs," Nash said, and led the way up, Brant following close at his heels, for once apparently willing to follow orders. He gestured at the bed. "Lie down."

"Why am I the pillow-biter in this scenario?" Brant said, but Nash just raised his brows and Brant did as he was told, a good DS with his DI, stretched out fully clothed on the bed Nash had made not half an hour earlier, that they'd been sharing half an hour before that like it made much sense at all. Then Nash joined him on it, straddled Brant's thighs all dressed up in his suit trousers and shirt and tie, and wrapped his hands around Brant's neck. 

"They were naked, right?"

"Any second now you're gonna tell me to get my kit off."

" _Right?_ "

Brant huffed. "Yeah, right." 

"But there was no sedative in them and they didn't fight back. No skin under the nails. No blood. No bruises anywhere but the neck."

Brant nodded, between the pillow and Nash's hands at his throat. "Right."

Nash squeezed slightly. He leaned down, pressed his hands down, looked Brant straight in the eye. "What am I doing?" he said.

"Besides throttling me?"

"Besides that." He leaned down harder, leaned down lower, got right up close to Brant's face. "You're the victim. You're conscious. I've got my hands around your neck. So why don't you fight back?"

Brant's hands went up to the headboard, fingers closing around a couple of the metal spokes in it. He drew an unsteady, laboured breath, difficult against the hands around his throat. He shifted his hips and Nash rocked his forward against him rather pointedly, rather purposely. Brant pulled on the headboard, his brows twitching upwards. 

"I don't fight back 'cause I'm fucking enjoying it," he said. And then Nash let go, sat up, straightened his tie down over his shirt. "Jesus Christ, they're getting off on it."

"Until they're not, at least," Nash said. He had a feeling he was right.

That night, they still had a team combing through fetish websites to see what they could find out about erotic asphyxiation when they went out to the club. 

"You ever do anything like that?" Brant asked, when they'd got inside, when they'd got their drinks and stood themselves back against the nearest convenient wall. 

"Like what?" Nash asked, so Brant took it upon himself to put one hand up to Nash's throat and press down lightly with his thumb. "Right, _that_." Nash shrugged. "No. I've never been into that. Please don't tell me you think all gay men like to get choked in bed."

"I bet the poof with the Hugh Grant hair who was sucking you off that night would've liked it."

"We should probably be concentrating less on my sex life and more on the case."

Brant shrugged. But he still had his hand on Nash's neck and fuck, if he'd done it right then and there he'd probably have let him. He was turning into _that_ pathetic wanker.

They went back to Nash's place after, sat down on the sofa and while Nash drank a bottle of mineral water Brant pulled a can of Carling out of the fridge that Nash knew for a fact _he_ hadn't put there. Of course, there were salt and vinegar crisps in his cupboard and Kit Kats in the bloody fruit bowl, so Carling in the fridge shouldn't have been a surprise when he thought about it. They sat there and watched Match of the Day that Brant had apparently set to record while Nash wasn't paying attention and the bastard sat there with his arm stretched out along the back of the sofa, behind Nash's shoulders, his knee nudging his, while he shouted at West Ham. And then, after, Brant sidled off to bed while Nash was pouring himself another drink. 

Nash sat himself back down on the sofa and drank his drink and tried not to think about Brant in his bed. He tried not to think about Brant's hand at his throat or the look on his face while he'd done it. He failed miserably, but he tried and maybe that was what counted, thought about just giving up and sleeping on the sofa but he wasn't going to be so utterly defeated as to abandon his own bed, so he went upstairs.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he asked when he got there. The answer was glaringly obvious, of course, given the lights were on and he had eyes in his head. 

"Wanking," Brant said, because he was demonstrably doing so. "Tossing off. Knocking one out. Roughing up the suspect. Badgering the witness." 

Nash rubbed his eyes with both hands, mostly so he wouldn't have to look in Brant's direction. 

"Yes, I can see that," he said. "But in my bed?"

"Well, mine's not here." Which was perfectly true if not perfectly reasonable. Nash looked up from behind his hand but apparently Brant hadn't stopped and showed no signs of doing so. "It's not a spectator sport, sunshine. Unless your lot's into that shite." He waved his free hand vaguely at his erection and Nash made the mistake of looking at it, big and hard and lurid. There was no possible way he was getting that out of his head. "Watching, I mean."

"About as much as _your_ lot are, I imagine," Nash replied. "Shit, I'm nowhere near drunk enough to deal with this." 

But he sat himself down in a chair across the room and he looked at Brant and Brant looked at him, expectantly. The bastard sat there stark bollock naked against Nash's headboard, legs stretched out on top of the duvet and spread out wide, squeezing his balls in one hand and the head of his cock with the other. He waited, like this wasn't taking his little game fifteen steps too far at all. So Nash decided fuck it, whatever, unzipped his fly, got it out and joined in. 

He watched Brant watch him watching him. He watched Brant's hands, watched him rub the head of his cock with his thumb, watched him cup his balls in his hand and squeeze. He watched the rise and fall of his chest as his breath got quicker, watched the muscles tense in his abdomen and his hips rock up to meet his hands. When he looked at Brant's face, fuck, his eyes were on Nash's cock and he came all over his fucking suit from it and wondered how the devil he was going to explain that to his dry cleaner while he watched Brant come on his own stomach. 

Then they cleaned themselves up and they went to sleep side by side just like nothing had happened. 

\---

They did it again the next night. 

They did it again the night after that, after they'd found a fifth victim, another gay man but this time not from the clubs. The night after that, Nash stripped down just as naked as Brant was and stuck to the leather chair as he tossed himself off with Brant's eyes all over him. The next night, he sat down on the bed and leaned back against the headboard and they watched each other's cocks while their thighs and calves and shoulders touched and all Nash could think was fuck's sake, it was fucking ridiculous, all this because Brant preferred Nash's flat to his own. He didn't blame him, of course - he'd seen Brant's flat and it wasn't fit for pigs to live in, either the animals or those of the human persuasion.

"You do me and I'll do you," Brant said the night after, and his hand was on Nash's cock before he could respond. 

"Jesus Christ, you must be desperate," Nash said, half thrilled and half disturbed, and the disturbed part couldn't stop gawping at Brant's hand on him. 

"Look, a hand's a hand and beggars can't be choosers," Brant said, and it even sounded halfway to convincing so he put his hand on Brant and pinched his foreskin up over the head of his cock. Then they stroked each other till they both came all over themselves and needed the his and his matching flannels Nash had put out in the bathroom so Brant wouldn't just use his. 

The next night, Nash got called into work on the way home, caught a cab and told Brant to go on without him. It turned out that the new lead he'd been called in for was just so much poppycock, about some drugs thing more than it was about the murders, and Nash went home even more fucking weary than usual. He had a drink in the living room, ate half a shitty cornish pasty Brant had bought at the corner shop standing in front of the fridge, then he went upstairs and swore. 

Brant was kneeling on the bed, facing the wall, leaning down on one hand against the headboard. Brant's knees were spread out about as far as they'd go without lasting injury. And Brant's fingers were pressed up between his cheeks. 

"How the fuck does your lot do this?" Brant asked, not even bothering to turn and see who'd arrived. Then again, it wasn't like Nash had been giving out keys to his flat to all and sundry.

"Lubricant," Nash replied, flippant till he frowned at him and stopped in the middle of taking off his leather jacket. "Please tell me you're using lube."

"Was I meant to?"

"Yes, for fuck's sake." He took off his jacket the rest of the way and toed off his shoes by the fitted wardrobe door. "You're doing it wrong."

"Like you'd know."

"Of course I'd know. Think about who you're talking to."

He crossed to the bedside table and he took out the lube and for the briefest of seconds maybe he even considered what he was doing before he climbed up on the bed behind Brant, still in his jeans and t-shirt. Maybe he thought about it as he slapped Brant's hand away from his arse and uncapped the lube, but he was firmly into the realms of unthinking fucking idiocy by the time he squeezed some out onto the tips of his first two fingers and leaned in, propped up with one hand on the small of Brant's back, to show that to him.

"You put lube on your fingers," he said. "Right? Then get it where it needs to be." He parted Brant's cheeks with his free hand, exasperated, tired, and rubbed the lube off his fingers and over his hole. "Then more," he said, and got some more of it over his fingers, and showed them to Brant again. "Right? Then do one finger first." He parted his cheeks again and rubbed the pad of his forefinger against Brant's arsehole, pushed against it. "Fucking relax," he said, and Brant muttered something under his breath but he breathed out slowly and then Nash's finger was in him right up to the knuckle. He shifted it slowly, felt Brant squeeze around it and his cock twitched to life in his jeans. Jesus, he had no idea what the fuck he was doing. 

"Second finger when you're ready," he said, feeling his cock throb as he watched what he was doing. "Ready?"

"Yeah," Brant replied, his voice gruff and strained, and Nash pushed the second one in alongside the first, slow, till it was knuckle-deep. Brant groaned. Nash rubbed the front of his jeans with the heel of his hand. Things had escalated bloody quickly. 

In the end, he must've fingered him for fifteen minutes or more, Brant's hips shifting between Nash's fingers in him and his own hand around his cock, sweat standing out on his skin from it, while Nash's non-dominant hand pressed down over his own still clothed erection. Nash went still, braced his arm and Brant swore, braced himself against the headboard and pushed back, fucked himself on Nash's fingers while Nash watched. There was something wrong with the world if the closest he'd got to a good fuck in six months or a year or whatever it was was a detective sergeant with an attitude problem.

Nash came in his jeans. Brant came all over the sheets. And then, of course, they cleaned off and went to bed like it was all just a dream. 

Nash made him sleep in the damp spot. It seemed fair.

\---

They did it again the next night. 

They did it again the night after that, too, but the night after that they found a sixth victim and Nash was pissed off and Brant was fucking livid but it was mostly just at themselves or at each other at the very least. They abandoned the clubs that night, saw the coroner, did the work and went home about 4am, for values of _home_ that meant Nash's flat and definitely not Brant's. They poured two whiskeys that half-filled the glasses, knocked them back, poured two more then sat down in silence, side by side on the sofa. Nash put the bottle on the table because he was sure they'd need it..

"Are we fucking this up?" Brant asked, dropping all the change out of his hip pocket onto the table with his wallet and his car keys and assorted crap, and Nash didn't have an answer so he just poured two more drinks. "Seriously, are we fucking this up?"

"I'm not some kind of gay psychic," Nash replied. "I can't sense when my people are in danger."

"That's not what I asked."

"We're not bad at our job." 

"Are you saying we're _good_ at our job?"

"Yes."

"It didn't sound like it."

"I don't give a toss what it sounded like."

"You're a real bastard sometimes, you know that?"

"Yeah, actually." 

And when Brant moved toward him, and Christ only knew what he intended to do, the first thing Brant actually did was spill his whiskey all over himself, right down his top, all over his jeans, all over the fucking leather sofa, and swore loud enough that he woke up next door's yappy shih tzu. 

"Go have a shower and calm the fuck down before you hurt yourself," Nash told him, just as harshly as he'd intended, so Brant stormed off upstairs and Nash cleaned the damn sofa off with a damp cloth while he listened to the shower running, though afterwards the living room just smelled like a bad combination of whiskey and Dettol. He knocked back the rest of his own drink then put them both in the sink, resisted the urge to throw them there and rested his forehead against the fridge like if he didn't he might put his fist through the coffee table. _Six_ dead. And no, it wasn't the kind of killing spree Weiss had gone on, but this made was six in as many weeks and Jesus Christ, it could just as easily have been _him_ as any of them. 

The shower went quiet. He went upstairs. And when he got there, the bathroom door opened in a puff of steam because Brant still couldn't fathom how to use the extractor fan and Brant walked out with a towel slung round his waist. Nash laughed. He couldn't help himself, it was just funny for some reason, or absurd or something like that, and Brant looked at him like he'd totally lost it and maybe he finally had because the next thing he knew he was pushing Brant up against the bedroom wall, right next to the bathroom door, and he was pulling the towel from round Brant's waist. He dropped it on the floor and he kissed him, Brant slapped him, he laughed and then he kissed him again and this time Brant's hands were on him, pulling tight at his shirt over the small of his back, and Jesus, Brant could've _pulverised_ him, could've pushed him away and ground him into mincemeat on the bedroom floor he was so much bigger across the shoulders and the chest and through his arms and everything, but he didn't and that just turned Nash on more. Frankly, he was so hard he hadn't thought being harder was possible.

Then he shoved Brant up face-first against the wall. He knew what he was doing, vaguely, somewhere in the back of his mind, but he was so fucking pissed off and so tired and so bloody angry that he wasn't thinking about it, certainly wasn't thinking straight, though Brant would probably have said something sarky about how _straight_ things weren't at that precise moment, if he'd been speaking at all. Nash bit his shoulder and made him swear. Nash got his hands to his hips and squeezed tight. Nash went down on his knees and before he could reassess what the fucking hell he was doing he'd pushed Brant's cheeks apart and got his tongue up against his arsehole and Brant was fucking _moaning_ like he couldn't form coherent words, like Nash had ever believed a tongue-tied Brant was a possibility. 

Brant leaned down against the wall, stepped his feet apart and fuck, Nash barely had the wherewithal to get his cock out of his suit trousers as he lapped at him, teased him with the tip of his tongue but he hadn't the restraint for a great deal of teasing, ended up tossing himself off on his knees with his face pressed to the small of Brant's back while he shoved his fingers up inside him and Brant had one hand round his cock and one hand round his balls, leaning against his shoulder as he stroked himself. Nash dragged him down, got his hands to Brant's hips and pulled till Brant got the idea and went down on his knees up against the wall and Nash got his fingers back in, felt him shift against them, while he got his cock between Brant's sweat-slicked thighs and laughed and laughed and fucking came against Brant's balls, one arm wrapped around his waist, six seconds before Brant made an almighty mess of the bedroom wall. 

He rested his forehead down against Brant's shoulder, closed his eyes and breathed, his chest to Brant's back. He could hear Brant's breath come as damn quickly and raggedly as his did. And maybe he should've said something, though he had no idea what, but he picked himself up, his muscles complaining as he did so, and dragged himself off into the bathroom. 

Maybe they hadn't fucked up the case, at least not yet or not completely. But he thought they might've fucked up just about everything else. 

\---

Brant disappeared after a mostly silent breakfast and Nash didn't see him all afternoon, till he turned up bearing sandwiches and coffee that didn't taste like it'd been made from three-week-old sludge and even then, the conversation was oddly perfunctory. He half expected him to leave that night, stay away, go back to his flat and sleep there for the first time in Christ knew how long, but there they were after an odd night of glancing at each other in one of the clubs while they tried not to look like they hadn't got a single thing to say, or maybe the exact opposite. Brant didn't even sleep on the sofa. They had a drink in silence, didn't even turn on the TV, then they went to bed, undressed, then slept. They didn't touch. There was nothing. Nash couldn't say he was surprised.

The websites turned up leads and they chased them down in the day, individually and separately. Nash remembers how bitterly cold it was as he waited on doorstep after doorstep, turning up his collar as if that had ever actually helped, how tempted he'd been by the offer of a cuppa when one of the interviewees offered but who knew, maybe he was about to be choked to death at any moment. Then again, maybe a decent cup of tea wouldn't have been a bad way to go, considering the state of the teabags at the station.

There was no more playing games at the club that night, or the night after. Nash started to wonder if he actually missed the sarcasm that usually followed at every turn, and could've merrily slapped himself about the head because he _did_ miss the way Brant had been playing with him on a nightly basis, fingers in his hair or on his neck in public, somewhere ten times more ridiculous in private. He hadn't wanted it, at least not sensibly, not really, not when he thought about it, because not only was Brant his partner but he was also virtually a card-carrying heterosexual. He didn't need to be Brant's bloody mid-life experimentation. He wasn't the convenient gay friend he could try things out with just to see what all the fuss was about.

Of course, the problem was he was thinking about the things they'd done. He was wanking in the shower thinking about Brant's hands on him like a proper pathetic twat. He was lying awake listening to him snore like a power drill thinking about his own hands on Brant, about how he shouldn't've known Brant's cock got just a fraction harder in the moment before he came, about the way he squeezed around his fingers when he put them in him, about coming on the small of his back or with his cock pushed up against the dip at the base of his spine by the crack of his arse, against his thighs. He was sitting in the fucking office thinking about wrapping his hands around Brant's throat and while that was a fairly standard reaction to DS Brant on any given occasion and he was sure half the population of Greater London would've cheerfully throttled the life out of him given half a chance, that wasn't quite what Nash had in mind. 

He frowned. Brant glanced up at him from across the desk and he frowned, too. Nash rounded the desk and Brant watched him; Nash put his hands around Brant's neck and Brant let him do it. 

"What are you thinking?" Brant asked. 

Nash had his eyes on his thumbs pressing lightly over Brant's windpipe, one just above the other, spaced just the way the bruises on the victims said the killer's had been, precise. He pressed a fraction harder. 

"I don't think the first one was the first," he said. 

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I think the _first_ one was before that. He knew what he was doing. He knew how he wanted to do it. He'd already got a taste for it."

Brant tilted his head back, looking up at him. "So there's another murder we don't know about?" he said, oddly calmly for someone with another man's hands around his neck. 

"Maybe. Or maybe death by misadventure." 

Brant pushed forward against his hands just a bit. "Or maybe the first one didn't die." 

There were people in the office looking at the two of them like they'd lost it by that point and when Nash realised exactly what he was doing, he couldn't honestly say he blamed them for it. After all, he was standing there like a proper weirdo between Brant's perpetually wide-spread legs with his hands around his neck and Brant, well, Brant was just sitting there on his decrepit office chair, casual except for the pink tinge to his face. It was hard to say if that was because Nash was cutting off the oxygen or not.

Nash did something very like grimacing and stepped away, rubbing his hands on his thighs. They went to work, Brant typing at his computer with two fingers, staring at the keys like he'd never seen Windows before, and Nash on the phone with other boroughs. It was the best idea they'd had for a fucking long time and they ran with it, chewed at it, beat with with a fucking hammer and the next night, thanks to some dogged police work and the judicious application of Brant's sturdy elbow to the suspect's face, they caught the bastard. It was the fucking bartender they'd been looking in the face for weeks without really seeing him, who they'd ruled out because he'd had some made-up alibi substantiated by a girlfriend who frankly seemed relieved when they told her they'd brought him in. Shit. Fucking shit. But at least they had him.

The man he'd been attempting to choke to death got off with bruises and a sore throat, which was more than could be said for the suspect himself. He was bleeding like his nose was a fountain right down the front of his shirt as he glared at the two of them under the bright station lights. Brant smiled as he passed. Nash did the same.

"Well, he doesn't hate gays," Nash said, watching him get marched into the interview room.

"Oh yeah?" Brant said, crossing his arms over his chest and cocking his head like that was some kind of half-amused challenge. "You know something I don't?" 

Nash gave him a sideways look of _do you really want me to answer that?_ and Brant huffed and leaned against the wall. He didn't look sure he wanted anything of the sort, for once, which made a perverse kind of sense.

"I know the type," Nash said, as they stood there side by side at the door. "He's the sort you take home after a night out and halfway through he says there's a been a misunderstanding, he was expecting a tin of Carling and Match of the Day."

"What's wrong with Match of the Day?" Brant said. "I _like_ Match of the Day."

Nash raised his brows. He put his hand on the door handle, turned it, paused. 

"My point exactly," he said. Brant scowled. They went inside after that; the confession wasn't long coming.

After, they shared a cigarette as they drove back to Nash's flat in Brant's shitty E-reg Merc that stood out a mile considering the area, just like Brant did though the neighbours had all got used to him enough to nod when they passed in hallways. They parked up and they went upstairs and microwaved some chickeny Italian pasta thing from the local Waitrose that'd just end up in the bin if he didn't eat it soon and Brant got a fork and piled some onto a slice of bread and ate it as a strange kind of pasta sandwich, like the fucking heathen he was. 

They shared another cigarette on the sofa after, like sharing it made it less of a fucking terrible idea, passing a big glass of whiskey back and forth between the two of them as they sat there shoulder to shoulder. It wasn't the first case they'd solved, the queer new DI and his pitbull DS. It'd been five months by then since Weiss and they actually had a hell of a record between them, but all the rest of it had been assaults, armed robberies, domestics, the occasional non-fatal knifing, not another serial. Most coppers went a whole career without a serial and they'd had two in four months. There was no wonder they were living on caffeine and booze and shitty microwave meals. 

They were there like that, drinking, silent, Nash not sure if it was residual awkwardness from the other night or the post-case come-down, for an hour or more before Brant said, "I'm going to bed," and he went upstairs and he took his holdall with him like he'd decided to move in. Nash wasn't entirely sure he hadn't but he wasn't drunk enough by half to even start considering that, so he went across the room to his array of glass bottles and poured another drink. He drank it slowly, standing back against the wall instead of sitting back down, resting his head back, one hand shoved into his hip pocket, toying with his car keys just to keep moving. There'd been seven men dead in the end, before they'd caught the bastard. Seven men just like him, lonely queers picking up company to pass the time. Of course, he hadn't had much chance to feel lonely since he'd met Brant. 

In the end, he abandoned his glass in the sink and reunited it with more or less the rest of the set because somehow washing up hadn't been high on his agenda for a while, and he went upstairs. He was thinking about sleep, wondering if they still had to get up in the morning now the super had had his press conference and they had the bastard off the streets, and he suspected they'd have to but hell if he felt like being in on time. Brant probably knew a place they could get a decent fry-up, if they were still on speaking terms, and to hell with Weetabix and skimmed milk. But when he got up the stairs Brant was sitting there on the end of the bed, feet on the floor, hunched forward with his forearms on his knees, naked, waiting.

"You took your time," Brant said, glancing up at him. 

"I didn't know I was expected," Nash replied. 

Brant stood. He didn't bother covering up, maybe because it wasn't like Nash hadn't seen everything he'd got and seen it more than once. He just rubbed the stubble over his head then rubbed the stubble on his face then looked at him. 

"We need to stop playing games," Brant said. 

"You started it."

Brant smiled wryly as he put his hands on his hips. "Yeah," he said. "And I think I've been patient, considering my record."

" _Patient_?" Nash frowned. "With what? With _me_?"

"You see anyone else here?"

Brant came forward. Brant's hands came up to Nash's biceps and he walked him back. Brant held him there up against the wall with both hands, at arm's length. Somehow out of his clothes he looked like even more of a fucking brute, maybe because the sodding cardigan he'd got semi-permanently attached hid how much muscle he had on him and there it all was, biceps, pectorals, obscenely defined abs. Nash wasn't exactly unfit himself but he'd gone the other way, the slim kind of distance runner build, probably because he _did_ run, would've normally jogged through the park in a morning except they'd had work on, and Brant had been there yapping at him over breakfast like a hyperactive child.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nash said.

"You're into me." Brant shrugged. "And I don't blame you, but you've done a piss-poor job of keeping it to yourself."

"It's not like that was my intention." 

"Yeah, well, road to hell, good intentions, all that shite."

Brant barred one arm over Nash's chest, right up by his collarbones, and leaned in close. 

"Look, if you want me to apologise..." Nash said.

"Do I look like I want you to apologise?"

Nash looked at him. He really _looked_ at him, the way his jaw was set, the way his nostrils flared, and he shrugged against the wall. "Honestly? I don't know." 

"Fuck, there's no wonder you're the only poof in London who's not got a boyfriend," Brant said, incredulous. Then he kissed him, and suddenly Brant wasn't the only incredulous one. Brant got his hands into Nash's short hair and he kissed him, pushed right up against him there against the wall and flicked his tongue against his lips, _kissed_ him, bare skin against Nash's suit and then there was a hand down between Nash's legs, rubbing, squeezing, sodding groping till he was hard against Brant's palm and Brant pulled back, looking pleased with himself. 

"That's not exactly the straightest thing you've ever done, Brant," Nash said. 

Brant shrugged. Brant smiled. "You're catching on," he replied. 

\---

These days, things are different. They've had to be.

Brant officially moved in about seven months after that, about a year since they'd met over that shit case with Weiss. It was fucking weird at the time, even though everyone down at the station already knew what was going on by then. And obviously after they'd gone to the super and given him the official talk about the fact he and Brant were seeing each other and yes, it was exactly what it sounded like, they couldn't work together. At least not directly. Sometimes there's some kind of a task force put together and they end up in the same office working the same case but officially, Nash has another DS, a woman like they thought giving him another man would lead to the further spread of homosexuality in the Metropolitan Police. Nash tries not to mind as long as the job gets done. Brant, on the other hand, thinks it's fucking hilarious.

So they go home together at the end of the day and Brant drinks Nash's expensive whiskey though he likes to say it's _theirs_ now and besides, it's Irish just like he is, sort of, or at least his family was. Nash tends to give him a withering look at that point and they've had to get a wooden coffee table to replace the glass one he always liked because Brant keeps putting his feet up on it and Nash had this horrifically vivid image of his legs going through it one day and glass jabbing him in the achilles. Sometimes he thinks shitty horror films on late night TV get to him more than the job does.

Nash runs in the park in the mornings and sometimes Brant joins him, though he mostly gets his exercise down at the gym, kicking the shit out of some poor unfortunate sod half his age. He hasn't had a blackout in months now. And no one at the station's brave enough to do much of anything to have a go these days, especially now there's two poofters on the payroll and not just one, and the new one's Tom bloody Brant. Brant takes that well, Nash thinks, but maybe that's because his Catholicism lapsed years before they met and his family's a bigger mess than he is. And anyway, the most Irish thing about him these days is the pub he still likes to go to.

He doesn't stop to think about that night they broke the case and brought the killer in very often, just now and then when they're eating dinner at the coffee table like that's normal behaviour for two grown men or watching Match of the Day and Brant's gesticulating at the TV with a tin in his hand like Gary Lineker can perform some kind of magic on the score. He thinks about Brant kissing him and how in the end he kissed him back just for lack of better ideas on how to deal with it, and Brant unbuttoned his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, untied his tie. Brant undressed him, went down on his knees to get his shoes and socks off and looked up at him with that fucking smirk that half the time Nash wants to slap straight off his face, though the rest of the time it makes him smile despite himself. 

Brant ran his hands over Nash's calves, his thighs, squeezed his balls and made him huff and then he was back on his feet again, nodding to the bed. 

"Look, before we're OAPs, okay?" Brant said, and Nash shook his head in something almost like exasperation but Brant slapped his arse and sent him on his way. So he went down on the bed, sprawled on his chest and felt the mattress dip as Brand got up and joined him. Brant tugged at his hips, made him go up on his hands and knees and Nash went along with it because why the fuck not, nothing could get any worse between the two of them. Or at least if it did, it'd be fucking spectacular.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Nash muttered, once Brant had the lube out of the drawer and his fingers rubbing up against his arse. 

"I can't believe you can't believe you're doing this," Brant replied, pushing there, and Nash made himself relax against it, let him push one finger in, turn his hand, pull out, push back in and Christ that was hot, so hot his cock was on the verge of aching with it. Brant got a second finger into him, like all those times Nash had done it to him, and he could feel himself pushing back against Brant's hand, undignified but who cared about dignity because apparently he didn't. Then Brant paused, Brant rubbed the head of his cock between Nash's cheeks, rubbed it right up against his arsehole and made him shift his knees farther apart in anticipation. 

The bastard was going to fuck him, he remembers thinking, and the idea of it sent a tingle of something ridiculous straight down through his cock. He remembers thinking he should tell him to stop, make him get a condom out of the drawer though who knew whether they were still in date, but in the end they'd been coming all over each other for weeks without a second thought so what the fuck. Besides, before he could even complete the thought Brant rested one hand by the crack of Nash's arse and he pushed it in just like that without a word, pushed into him in fits and starts between interesting muttered swear words till the front of his thighs were pushed up against the back of Nash's. He'd got Brant's cock in him and just the thought of that made him squeeze tight against the length of him, so fucking exasperated by it that he didn't even manage to blush at the idea of being fucked in the arse by his partner. Brant hissed in a breath. When Nash glanced back over his shoulder, Brant had apparently found the blushing Nash had lost because he'd turned bright red across his cheeks and neck. It was something.

He remembers Brant's hands at his hips, remembers them moving up over his waist, rubbing at his back between his shoulderblades before Brant started to move. He remembers being obscurely glad the bed was as solid as it was because the neighbours were probably asleep and the headboard banging against the wall would probably have woken up the bloody shih tzu. He remembers how loud Brant's breathing was, how he rocked his hips to move in him and how he pushed back to meet him, skin slapping skin. He hadn't had a cock in him for years before that, not since his twenties, but Jesus Christ he wanted Brant's. 

Brant came in him with a jerk and a growl and a shudder, gripping hard at his hips and he pulled out quickly, flopped down on his back. Nash remembers thinking that was bloody typical, Brant being a selfish cunt at the best of times, but Brant raised his brows at him all flushed and sweaty, his cock still half-hard against his stomach, then he pulled up his knees. Nash caught on quickly; forty seconds later he was in him, over him, Brant's legs around his waist clamped tight like a fucking Russian gymnast, his hands gripping tight at his arms. It only took a couple of minutes for him to finish too, pushed up balls-deep in Brant, face to face and eye to eye in a way that should've been awkward but somehow wasn't and just made it that much better, hotter, his muscles so tight he was fucking shaking. 

He was horrified, he thinks, after. He was horrified at himself till Brant reached up and patted his cheek and said, "Jesus, anyone'd think _you_ were the one popping his fucking gay cherry." Nash laughed after that, cracked the fuck up like he'd lost it and it wasn't even funny and Brant pulled him down and rolled on top of him, kissed him till he couldn't breathe never mind laugh. It was fine, though: they both knew the joke was on Nash. And whatever the game was, he'd somehow managed to win and lose at the same sodding time. Brant had that odd kind of effect on him.

"I think we might've found your true calling, Brant," Nash tells him tonight, sprawled naked on the bed. 

"So it's not police work, then?" Brant says, sitting up amused from between Nash's thighs. 

"Yeah, I was thinking sex. You never were much of a detective."

Brant grins, the smug sod that he is, because he knows Nash is teasing. "I was always a bit of a prodigy in the bedroom area," he says, and jiggles his erection about with one hand like a fucking obscene puppet till Nash just rolls his eyes. Then he ducks back down to suck Nash's cock. 

It's not perfect. They both drink too much and they smoke too much and there's times he gets his hands around Brant's neck and squeezes till neither of them can breathe because maybe that's better than fucking someone up with a baseball bat, or a hurley for that matter because it's not like Brant got rid of it in the move. Brant's hurley's in the corner by the door with Nash's bat and sometimes Nash wonders what might've happened if they hadn't met, wonders while Brant pushes him up against the wall just inside the door and tries to get his entire suit off at the same time though he's not got nearly enough hands for that. And they'll fuck up against the wall or Nash'll go down on his knees or Brant will and Nash wonders if Brant would've got himself killed by now, wonders if he'd've fared any better himself. He doesn't have an answer but he doesn't really need one.

It's not perfect. They've both got tempers and they don't always control them, don't always even try to. They've both got problems they'd be best off talking through with the staff psychologist but they never will, and they'll probably both burn out entirely by the time they're fifty, or before that. Nash doesn't exactly see them retiring to a life of golf and margaritas on the Costa del Sol. He's not sure what's going to happen except Brant's mouth on him is, in that moment, enough to make his thoughts grind to a complete and utter halt. It's a rare thing. His brain's always turning.

Brant teases the tip of his cock with the tip of his tongue and Nash's hands pull tight at the headboard. Brant's already come once tonight, in Nash in the shower that's not really big enough for the two of them but that doesn't stop them trying, so after it's done they'll sleep and in the morning, they'll go back to work. There's always another case. There's more cases than they've hours in the day for.

It's not perfect but when it comes down to it, they're both half in love with the job. 

It's not perfect, but they're half in love with the job and half in love with each other. He likes to think that that's enough.


End file.
